Summer of '69

A few hours ago, my mother-in-law picked up my son for the night, and I immediately got ready for a quiet night to myself. The whole day was hot, hitting 102F with a 106F heat index, and neither my son, nor I, was in the mood to do much except stay inside with the A/C. My poor son didn't know what to do with himself and I was anxious for my night of freedom to begin. As I was getting a much needed shower, an old song from the 80's entered my mind. It took me back to a much more carefree time and reminded me of summers filled with leisure and fun. The music of that decade always brings a smile to my face and lifts my spirits...unless, of course, one of those sappy love ballads begins to play, but I won't go there.

Since I can't get the video of this song to transfer over, the lyrics will just have to do.

Summer of 69 - Bryan Adams

I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it till my fingers bled
It was the summer of '69

Me and some guys from school
Had a band and we tried real hard
Jimmy quit and Jody got married
I shoulda known we'd never get far

Oh when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Ya - I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life

Ain't no use in complainin'
When you got a job to do
Spent my evenin's down at the drive-in
And that's when I met you

Standin' on your mama's porch
You told me that you'd wait forever
Oh and when you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life
Back in the summer of '69

Man we were killin' time
We were young and restless
We needed to unwind
I guess nothin' can last forever - forever, no
And now the times are changin'
Look at everything that's come and gone
Sometimes when I play that old six-string
I think about ya wonder what went wrong

Standin' on your mama's porch
You told me it would last forever
Oh the way you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life

Back in the summer of '69

Summertime bliss

Despite my preference for cooler temperatures and the joys of tasty wintertime delights, there are a few pleasures that can only be found on a warm day.

In our home, I always make sure that we have some fresh fruits and vegetables at the ready. While this is important to do for the health of any household, my son's diet makes it even more vital that he has access to foods that are packed with nutrients. Gluten and dairy products have already been eliminated from his diet, so they must be replaced with other foods that can provide the same nutritional benefits. Among the foods that I love to keep on hand (especially when they are in season) are strawberries, which I consider one of the culinary icons of summertime.

Nearly everyone in my family loves this berry, and my son and I are no exception. There's nothing like a sweet, yet tart, strawberry on a hot summer day. They're refreshing, light, and always a pleasure to snack on straight from the carton. Even though eating them cold is nice, they are at their best when warmed by the sun. Today, I found a good deal (the rising produce prices notwithstanding) and located 2lb. cartons of strawberries for $5 each. I snatched one up and already, my son has devoured nearly half of the container! So, to honor the luscious strawberry, I located some trivia about it on http://www.pickyourown.org/strawberryfacts.htm:

Berries on a straw? There is a legend that strawberries were named in the nineteenth-century by English children who picked the fruit, strung them on grass straws and sold them as "Straws of berries". Another theory is the name was derived from the nineteenth-century practice (ands still today, although most farms use raised beds, enclosed in plastic) of placing straw around the growing berry plants to protect the ripening fruit.

Fragrant - The strawberry belongs to the genus Fragraria in the rose family, along with apples and plums. The name of the scientific classification was derived from the Old Latin word for fragrant. The modern Italian word for strawberry is still "Fragola".

Very berry or not? The strawberry is not classified by botanists as a true berry. True berries, such as blueberries and cranberries have seeds inside. The strawberry, however has its dry, yellow "seeds" on the outside (each of which is actually considered a separate fruit).

Native American Indians called strawberries "heart-seed berries" and pounded them into their traditional corn-meal bread. Discovering the great taste of the Native Americans bread, colonists decided to create their own version, which became an American favorite that we all know and love .. Strawberry Shortcake.

Ornamental value - The English and French also found strawberries used the beautiful heart-shaped berries to landscape their gardens. In fourteenth-century France, Charles V ordered twelve hundred strawberry plants to be grown in the Royal Gardens of the Louvre.

Lovely berries - Strawberries have long been associated with love and flirtation. At wedding breakfasts in provincial France, newlyweds traditionally were served a soup of thinned sour cream, strawberries, borage and powdered sugar. Miss that "borage"....

Seedy characters - On the average, there are 200 tiny seeds in every strawberry. If all the strawberries produced in California this year were laid berry to berry, they'd wrap around the world 15 times. That's enough strawberries to provide every U.S. household with 12 pint baskets.

Are you weird? Respondents to a recent national survey labeled strawberry lovers as "health conscious, fun loving, intelligent and happy." Non-strawberry lovers, on the other hand, were described as "weird, boring, stuffy--picky, fussy eaters who avoid healthy foods."

Looking forward to new experiences

One of the best things to move a person forward is to engage in new experiences. These experiences help keep our spirits up, open up our minds, make new friends, and reveal previously unknown talents and interests. I have a number of new and fun experiences to look forward to and while my life may become far busier than it has been in quite a while, I look forward to the distractions. Being busy doing something fun is better than being bored doing something that has lost its appeal.

In less than a month, I have these new experiences to look forward to:

1. My new job as a teacher's aide. I'm anxious to teach at the high school level.

2. My son's first year of school.

3. The potential for getting involved with the school's performing arts programs.

4. Joining Texas Buglers - a worthwhile way of donating my talents. You can learn more about them at http://www.texasbuglers.org/. I play several instruments and trumpet is among them. I haven't had the opportunity to play my trumpet since I left high school, so this will be a good way to revive my trumpet skills and make better use of my gift.

5. Joining the PTA.

6. Returning to college part-time to finally get a grip on Algebra. (Not really a new experience, but I will be attending a new school.)

This year looks to be a busy one, as the above activities will be in addition to events currently going on, but I'm looking forward to it. Now lets see how my sanity holds up.

Making use of your gifts

If I could give my son one piece of advice, it would be to learn what your gifts are and use them to their fullest potential. Many of us are guilty of not doing this - we possess special talents but we fail to recognize their value in our lives. We fail to realize that our gifts can lead into lives that can give us great satisfaction, rather than working only for the paycheck and deriving no pleasure from it. I've learned the hard way, and only now am I realizing the path that I should've taken much earlier in life. Perhaps I would have gone farther than I have.

As a child, I possessed a talent for drawing. I could draw since I could hold a pencil in my hand and I started out 2-dimensional, not the usual stick figures that a small child would be expected to do. By the time I was 10, I was becoming adept at drawing houses and horses, but by the next year, I began to let my drawing fall to the wayside. I had discovered my gift for music. From that point on, I seldom, if ever, drew. In my teen years, I discovered that I was good at theater and for a few years, I cultivated my abilities in both music and theater, finding great pleasure, as well as catharsis for that teen angst that so many of us have gone through. Those two activities kept me sane while I tried to figure out who I was inside. I initially pursued music education as my major when I began college, but I lacked the drive and (at that time) maturity to go through the rigors of a performing arts curriculum. I wasn't willing to put in the time and energy for practice and study. Much later, I realized that I could also write, and while I earned a college degree in English, even this gift is not being used to its fullest potential.

Today, my gifts of drawing and stage continue to collect dust. I still participate in music through my church in the forms of voice and instrument, but I know that I could be much better than I am had I taken greater care of the gifts that I was born with. Instead, I allowed myself to be distracted by other things going on in my life, as well as failing to overcome my sense of impatience in most things that I do.

When discussing things we should've done, my husband often says: "Could'a, should'a, would'a." You can wonder "what if..." all you want, but it will never change the fact that you never put your best effort into the gifts that were handed to you. While I'm still young enough to make up for lost time, I still find myself busy with the daily grind of life to even try to make something of my gifts...or perhaps I'm still too impatient to take the time to work at it. At least I can impress upon my son that he should grab life with both hands and go for it!

When you're tired of the heat, dream of winter

I've always loved the old-time winter themes painted by Thomas
Kincaid. I love winter!

I've mentioned the summer heat in Texas a few times, and one would think that such weather is a given in this part of the U.S. However, when it lasts for over two months without any real break, it soon begins to be all you can think about: how to stay out of the heat, how to cope with the heat when you must be outside, how to not become too sunburned, how to prevent heat prostration, etc. While the answers are obvious, it doesn't diminish the fact that heat is constantly on your mind; it affects all of your activities, so you always must take heat into account, thereby keeping the hot temperatures constantly on your mind.

I've read that the mind has the amazing ability to overcome discomfort if you use it right. So does this mean that I should be able to feel cooler if I mentally place myself in a cooler climate? Hmmm. It's worth a shot. Or I'll just keep looking at those wintertime paintings by Thomas Kincaid. Dreaming of winter is easy, but will the heat in my reality melt the snow?

It's time for bed, but the body is still awake.

This is what I wish would take place tonight, but something tells me I'm not so lucky!

This afternoon and tonight, I find myself with a wound-up little boy who absolutely refuses to sleep. He would much rather play. You may think it selfish of me to relish those two times of the day when he's down to sleep rather than enjoying his antics, but naptime and bedtime help me maintain my sanity. It is currently 10:38p.m. and the little guy still can't close his eyes! Mr. Sandman, you're overdue!

Going home

Genealogy is a subject that people either understand or don't understand. I've met some people who feel that there's no sense in researching your roots, while others, like myself, feel the need to know who came before them. To me, family research gives me a greater sense of personal history, as well as a sense of identity and association. This work also gives me an outlet for the researcher in me - always needing to know more about any subject that holds mysteries or other elements of the unknown.

Today, I spent the best part of the afternoon working on my family tree while answering queries from 4 other people doing the same thing. One of them turned out to be a distant cousin of mine, 2 of them are likely distant relatives of my husband, and I can't really tell with the 4th person. I've already located, confirmed, and actively communicated with 2 other cousins on my husband's side and located other distant relatives who continue to reside in Ireland in the same house that has been in their family for over 150 years.

When I get the rare opportunity to work on this project, I continue to be amazed at how far back I've gone. Amid the people who've come before me is a history of the world. My research has taken me all over the U.S., Europe and the British Isles. One side of my family goes back to the first millenia. I believe I've gone back (although I'm sure many of the dates are approximations) to the 400's in ancient Scotland and Ireland, back to when the Scotti tribe of Ireland traveled to what is now Scotland, and defeated the Vikings, Picts, and the Saxons. Those records are sparse, but they at least give me a wonderful picture of who I am inside and the history that I belong to.

Sometimes, by going home, you find out more about yourself than you could have ever imagined.